linuxgirlie

I think people think to hard about this, we all know that member of staff who isn't good with ICT, but I think it is the attitude towards trying something knew that holds staff back, not their skills. An example. We had a gentleman teacher who had worked here for his entire career, he retired a couple of year ago.... he didn't like computers much and didn't really use them, but when we put one in each classroom (running Linux) he shocked us. He helped other members of staff, got really into using openoffice and never ever complained. Another example. When we first started out we only installed Linux in the main computer suites. This included a cross-curricular suite which held 50 computers. People booked the suite....the bookings didn't go down when it moved to Linux, and I never ever had someone come and ask for help. They just used it. You got to remember a locked down linux client is just like a locked down windows client, there is only so much a teacher can do on that machine, and so you are minimising any problems that will come with change. The start menu is in the same place, the applications menu is in the same place, the 'my computer' is on the desktop, the shares are in the 'my computer', the memory stick pop-ups on the desktop, the dvd pops up a dvd player when placed in the drive, when saving work it goes to the same place as normal. Everything is identical.

We use a modified version of 'smbwebclient'

@Grumbledook I agree with the fanboi system. I have found out several times it just does not work.... Whenever I get an email from a school asking me about moving to Karoshi/FOSS/OSS I ask the following questions, until I know the answers I cannot help: a) What do you want? Eg. file servers? email? website? -- Some schools are happy that the county does a professional website for them, so why pressure them to do it in house...no no....we need to know what you actually NEED. b) What equipment do you have? How many clients? How many students and staff? I need to know if you will need to find the cash for new servers, or if we are just going to do the scary option and re-install the current ones! How many clients? If we can do a single server or if it will need to be spread across several for the load. c) What client software do you have? If you have £10,000 worth of software, I will NOT suggest you go to Linux clients unless you can get 90%+ working in wine/web-based. If not stick with servers only. If you have very little software, list it.....I have gotten good at finding alternatives... d) What are the staff like? What is their attitude to change? Children need no training they will just use whatever you put infront of them, but staff are different. How much training will they need? We have managed to do techie training on the use of Karoshi within an hour (setup a single server and then user training). With the normal staff we do yearly top-ups for everyone new (or old) to get the gist of the email system etc etc e) How willing are the staff? There is no point putting something in, only to overhear someone saying its 'linux' fault.....though it is funny when you find they are working on a windows pc! Also get them involved. As we have an ethos here, we get lots of staff coming in saying ...."hi can I have such and such....oh its free and its open source!!"...That is a good attitude. f) What is you internet like? I find OSS very internet dependent, updates, downloads etc etc and if you are hosting in house, you really need that lease-line. It can be done, one of our major successes was in Africa, they had a download limit of 10gb a month for the whole school....ok it meant it cost me a few pennies posting Karoshi CD's for them, but it can be done with hardly any internet access if necessary. g) Very important....timescale! We have gone to places before and done this in a day (servers not clients). Were I work we did it over the Summer Holidays, but that included re-installing all the client computers. How long do you have? How quickly do you want it? I think thats about it!

Damn it wrong thread sorry.

Sorry about bringing an old thread up but someone asked about Karoshi Documentation, you can now find an under construction version here

Thank you. But it is all self taught. I have never done any CPD or courses to learn Linux at all. It all came from the Internet, Books, Magazines and just messing about on test computers/virtual machines.

To "lock-down" my Ubuntu clients I use gconf. It's a set of scripts that tell the computer what access to give each person. You can either have this as a per computer bases or a per user basis, it has a frontend so you don't have to do it all by hand. I use Linux as my main system at home and have done for 10 years, I also play alot of games....what ones are you talking about? I tend to use cedega/wine though....not native. Though the recent news is that Steam is releasing it engine for Linux so that their games will run natively. : [Phoronix] It's Official: Valve Releasing Steam, Source Engine For Linux!

OK here are my views on this and I do work in a school and I am a Network Manager....before we get into all the you don't know what it's like cause your a teacher/work in the private sector malarkey: We do this here already, it works very well. For those saying what about when they work in businesses, there is nothing to worry about. We have had students come back from work experience who have had to input data via a console all day or others who say that using the OSS gave them a head start over others when going for jobs/university. I'm not saying that this is with all jobs, but sometimes, it helps a lot more than people let on. It also means when our yr6's and yr7's arrive we give them all the software for free on a disk in their school information pack. We have Linux on the clients and servers, and apart from our web-based software all of the client software is OSS. All our software has to be web-based if it isn't OSS. This has helped us a lot not just because it is very very easy to roll out onto a server or into moodle meaning that all computers, running Windows/Mac/Linux around the school can view and use it. No running around after individual computers, and low maintenance. We also have our own webserver here running, Elgg, Moodle, eGroupware, Squirrelmail, Joomla, Drupal, Home Access, and probably others I have forgotten. Most of ours are not that old, but we can afford to replace computers because we build our own from components and run them on Linux so no OS licenses, it also allows us to put in 22" TFTs and Nvidia Graphics cards by default, so that the lads can go anywhere in the school and use programs such as blender. I don't know why people have such a problem with this one. We allow all students to use whatever device on the network. They connect via our wireless or they can use a spare port on the wall. We have had mobiles, laptops, netbooks, psp, ipods you name it, and I have never had a problem with viruses, network being hacked or anything else in the past 6 years. This is something we are looking into, at the moment we are still with KCN for our ISP, but we don't use their websense service, and provide our own squid/dansguardian proxy to stop access to websites. This one I don't agree with 100% We get the staff to buy web-based resources so that they can be used throughout the school. The use of Moodle is on the up, but it does take alot of time for people to write their own resources. To my knowledge 99% of our CPD is done in house, we also have alot of old students or parents or friends who come in and do talks for free so this is n/a to us. I see this happen here a lot. We have moved on from when it was Windows based having to run around all the time, we now have to do that very little, with just myself and my technician(part-time) supporting 400+ devices. We have found using OSS has allowed us to re-code, or provide solutions for staff that wouldn't of been possible within budget. We have also found alot of the students will recode, find bugs and generally help out as they can look into the software and fix it. Again this is a big one for us here. We use student support alot. They code for us, bug fix, tell us about any security holes, and also tell us what the students dislike about the system so we can make changes. They also help build computers and do general day-to-day tech support. We have had several students go though ICT degrees and tell us that helping out gave them the edge in the classes. Very very important! ----- Jo

Oh dear.....like others have said Debian have a really nice group for women(Debian Women), so does KDE(KDE Women - KDE Community Wiki), and LinuxChix(LinuxChix | Be Polite. Be Helpful.) is a nice place to learn and hang-out as well and has an awesome logo.....none of those have a 'special' wallpaper, flowers? Burgh.....what is this the 1940's? and what the hell is that ubuntu logo doing with the female symbol merged into it.....bad idea.

Ours is stopped

Thanks, this is all very helpful, we are planning on doing another re-training soon for staff and the main focus will be facebook, so I will forward your information on to our e-safety team to make sure they include this information. We have just had our Ofsted and gained an Outstanding, so all the AUP/CoC information is perfectly sound. I still am in two minds about Protection vs Intrusion especially as most adults and children would probably think its intrusion into their personal lives, even if you explain that your trying to protect them. I think in this situation, the only thing you can do is cover yourself, by making sure everyone knows the costs of posting their lives online. Thanks again, Jo

Thanks Elsiegee, we do, do all of that. But it is not bullying or other stuff, our child protection officer deals with all that, we also train all the students and staff, and regularly do re-training and awareness courses, that sort of stuff is easy and straight forward to deal with. It is the grey stuff I am worried about. For example what do you do if say a parent mentions they have seen a friend of their child in pictures drunk and at the pub/party when they are clearly 14/15/16/17 or seeing a member of staff drunk in a photo etc etc These are clearly their private life, so should the school get involved...or should it be shrugged off as it's their private life nothing to do with us...that's why I was asking where the line was drawn. The above example we haven't actually had this at our school yet(fingers crossed), but it was something I would like to research in case we do, as like people are saying social networking and the posting of these kind of pictures/videos are getting more common especially friends tagging photos rather than the person uploading them. Also the school staff etc are changing and they may have pictures uploaded prior to any training, maybe during their uni days.....what do you do then....you can't ask for them to take them down? Thanks, Jo

A word of warning about Linux From Scratch.....I have done it once......and once is enough! It will eat your life and soul.....you will have nights of no sleep......if this sounds like fun go ahead! If not go for something a little more complete, like any of the Debian 'brands'.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this is such a grey area!

We take our e-safety here very very strongly, as should most schools, but where does the responsibility of the school stop? Does it extend to posting outside of school?(It is banned in school) Only if they took the footage on the school grounds? If they are a student under 18? If they are seen in uniform? If they have identified other students? If they are behaving inappropriately?(drunk, posing inappropriately) If it is something they do in their private life? (though not that private if on facebook.) Only if they mention the school by name? I suppose the question is, where should the line between protection and intrusion be drawn? Where do you draw the line? Thanks, Jo

Im 26 and a Network Manager. I started working in IT in Education when I was 16 (part-time technician whilst doing A-Levels)........urgh.....feels ages ago!

hmmmm, this is a hard one. We are a 700 pupil grammar school with 400+ computers/laptops etc. We use Linux on 90% of the hardware in our school., including 12 of our 14 servers. It has taken us 6 years to get to this position and it wasn't easy, especially on the client side, but it was worth it. The school previously had the Microsoft Schools Agreement and RM, this was ok when I first started here because they only had 80 pc's! But we were expanding rapidly and so couldn't keep with the yearly payments. The first thing we did was ditch RM and go with Linux servers (Running Karoshi) and keep the MSA. This saved a nice lump sum and none of the staff were any the wiser, apart from the school website and email system changing. Next we got rid of the MSA, this meant re-installing all the computers with Linux. We did this slowly, starting with the ICT labs, and then moving onto any new machines...as we hand build all our machines this made it easier, as we just didn't buy a license at all. Once we had done this we moved onto the rest of the computers. Our office staff/burser all still use Windows, though this is something we would like to change it is just not possible at the moment. For software side, we just use alternatives, if a department needs software it has to be web-based or it doesn't get purchased. We have had our ups and downs here, but overall its been good, new staff that come to the school just seem to fit in, especially the younger ones fresh out of Uni, they don't really take notice of what we are using, which I think is good because of the way that everyone is moving to an 'online' lifestyle, they just seem to cope with change better. The students also don't really notice either, probably for the same reason. Also on open evening we find quite a few parents who have a linux machine at home or have used OSS on their computer, so they understand what we do here. And if you are worried about the students don't be, we just got an outstanding in our Ofsted, and though yes it is down to the teachers, it also shows that a member of staff teaching with a Linux computer do just the same as someone with a Windows computer. Hope that is some help. Jo

I'm in a Wave 5 school, I would say in Kent, Wave 6 will go before Wave 5 because Wave 6 is in the KLEP1 whereas we are in KLEP2.

Bumping this really old thread.....since iplayer has been update to the new version it has stopped working again. Anyone else having these problems? Ohh, ignore, think I fixed it.

Not sure if you have fixed this, but to locked down my Ubuntu machines here I use gconf-editor.

Yes its web-based only and yes its based on the LTS. With regard to email, at the moment you have a choice between Squirrelmail and Egroupware for frontends that a built into the disk, but as it is a proper mail server you can choose whatever frontend you like, even outlook.

Yeah the system isn't "locked down" if you go onto the server you can access everything as a normal ubuntu server, so you can install other packages etc etc if you wish.

Well I'm biased as I am a Dev for Karoshi. But it is the setup of the servers and web management tool that makes it above a vanilla Ubuntu server, but if you have the knowledge then you could create your own setup using a vanilla system, Karoshi is really designed for people that don't want to do the fiddly bits.

Karoshi on the servers, which is Ubuntu Based and Ubuntu on the Clients.

I did it servers first with OSS on the clients. Then when we got new computers in we built them without an OS and installed Linux, as the clients died we replaced them with Linux machines. We are at the point now where we don't have many Windows clients left.